Gadgetory

it's summer in California that means fire and widespread devastation hundreds of square miles of it drones of a new weapon to help fight the flames instead of sending ground crews into dangerous conditions or using helicopters that can't fly in heavy smoke drones are taking photos and sending live videos of fires and their aftermath Menlo Park fire in California in the heart of Silicon Valley is one of the nation's first fire departments to use drones they're regularly called on to help fight California's long wildfire season drones also create detailed 360 degree aerial images to map burned out areas after the fires pass through with a drone you can get darn near the same level of capabilities without putting a person in an aircraft which is incredibly expensive the drones very low cost relative of what you get back cameras on the drone give pilots a bird's-eye view so crews can see things like the hottest part of the fire whether or not a fire has crossed a containment line or if people are in danger in this training demo pilots use a thermal camera to see people through smoke inside a five-story building I'm gonna switch over to thermal view and suddenly now we can see that we have at least two individuals inside this room joins can also measure wind speed and direction so crews can predict what a fire might do next all of our pilots when they're on duty have these DJI maddox with them and this one's wrapped so it stands out as a fire department aircrafts and then we have you know charger spare batteries that we keep with it and this is what's on our engines on a daily basis Lajja drones are also a key part of the arsenal they can fly for up to 40 minutes double the time of many smaller drones as well as cameras they can carry other items like an LED light to illuminate a scene at night some of our drones can carry 10 pounds or more so the ability to fly things like a life jacket a radio a space blanket that could actually make a difference seconds matter but flying a drone and working out what's happening on-screen isn't easy especially if you're in a high-stress situation like a fire with a free app called first response from agb's details like road names we speed and crew locations are overlaid on the drone image so pilots don't have to cross-reference and other maps the California Air National Guard is using the mq-9 Reaper this summer it's a military drone that flies for hours to identify where the fire has jumped containment lions and houses in the fires path the US government has contracted for companies to fly fixed-wing drones to fight fires on federal land this frees up resources like helicopters foot water drops and fire crews aren't the only ones flying drones to fight wildfires some utilities like San Diego Gas and Electric are inspecting the power grid from the sky with drones these third-party drones have lied out on board similar to the technology used in self-driving cars and generate 3d maps of potential issues like damaged power poles and lines in the future drones may truly be the first responders by having a drone automatically launch go line of sight to a call sending information back we can actually evaluate the scene and decide do we need to escalate our responsive deescalate or response while over 180 us fire departments are beginning to use drones widespread adoption is still up in the air they're still working out all the rules with the FAA on how this all work so we're happy that in this area were not being ignored having another set of eyes in the sky is an invaluable tool to help win the battle against wildfires and to save lives